Once in Europa by John Berger (Vintage International)

A luminous collection of interwoven stories, Once in Europa is a portrait of two worlds−a small Alpine village bound to the earth and by tradition, and the restless, future-driven culture that will invade it−at their moment of collision. The instrument of entrapment is love: the passion of a willful shepard for a shrewd bourgeois housewife; of a vital young woman for a dashing Russian who has come to work in the local factory; of a steadfast son for his aged mother. Lives are lost and hearts are broken, and, always, love is a transcending form of grace. In Once in Europa, it speaks as plainly and as movingly as a remembered language, creating a work of astonishing tenderness.

Storyteller, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, dramatist and critic, John Berger is one of the most internationally influential writers of the last fifty years. His many books include Ways of Seeing, the fiction trilogy Into Their Labours, Here Is Where We Meet, the Booker Prize-winning novel G, Hold Everything Dear, the Man Booker longlisted From A to X, and A Seventh Man.